A Euro-kiss that dare not speak it's name

[Photo by Richard Frost/Gay Star News]

"Will Eurovision censor a kiss between Finland's Krista Siegfrids and a female dancer?

Turkey has just banned the show from being broadcast and now the press reports that there is pressure on Eurovision to cancel the kiss before Saturday's final. Eurovision organisers are worried other Eastern European countries might ban the contest too.

If the kiss is censored it would be a huge victory for anti-gay voices. But if thousands of us sign the petition calling for the kiss to go on, we can show Eurovision that there will be much bigger outcry if they choose censorship over celebration."

Read more from All Out's  page here.

A Spaniard asks "How?"

"Today, headlines from around the world resonate with the news that there are nearly six million Spanish citizens currently unemployed. Spaniards are in the process of losing their quality of life, along with their access to health, education and even food...

How is it possible for the country to accept that over half its population of under 25-year-olds are unemployed? How does a society sustain itself with over a million members living in households where not so much as a euro comes in by way of a monthly salary? How sick is a society when the only social group not to lose its purchasing power in recent years are the retired and when there are more than 150 home evictions per day?

Juan Luis Sánchez gives some answers in this article for Eurozine.

Catalan aristocrat is "a link between North Korea and the world."

Alejandro Cao de Benós, born in Tarragona, Spain in 1974, is a descendant of the barons of Les in the Aran Valley in northern Catalonia, the earls of Argelejo and the marquises of Rosalmonte. Besides his rather unusual lineage, it is unlikely that his name would be widely known if this 39-year-old Catalonian was not an important foreign spokesperson for the North Korean regime.

Founder and president of the Korean Friendship Association (KFA), he is an honorary special delegate of the country, where he is known as Cho Son-il, meaning “Korea is one”. In an interview with Tribuna Popular he explained the origin of his relationship with the Asian country:

Read more at this article from Global Voices.

My book, "The Re-Made Parent," to be published via a Barcelona agency

 

My non-fiction book, "The Re-Made Parent" is to be published via the Antonia Kerrigan Literary Agency in Barcelona (AK Digital, Amazon (and others) plus print-on-demand.) 

(Thanks to Matthew Tree and all those involved in the long struggle to get to this point, finally.)

"The freedom of the fox in the chicken run:" (A metaphor for Europe?)

"The great welfare states as they now exist in some of the countries of Western Europe are also built upon an economic lie...

When those preaching the free market are in fact using their power simply to protect their interests – or, in the case of the real intellectual naifs, to protect the interests of the already powerful – then the only freedom we might talk about is the freedom of the fox in the chicken run."

Nicholas Bradbury made his literary debut this year with the novel "Market Farm", a reworking of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" for the free market era. He talks here [at EuroZine] about influences for his satirical take on the current financial crisis and potential grounds for hope for the future.

Catalan outdoes “the majority language” in Spain's Wikipedia entries

Groups of enthusiasts in Catalunya have ensured something truly remarkable.

“A study by Mark Graham (@geoplace), researcher at Oxford University...shows that 35,000 [*Wikipedia] articles have been created in Spanish territory with coordinates in Catalan, [compared to only] 19,000 in Spanish.”

In other words, there are currently more entries for the whole of Spain in Catalan than in Castillian Spanish.

Also quite impressive is the fact that the Catalan language is ranked “first place in an index compiled by the Wikimedia Foundation, which measures the quality of the thousand most important articles.”

“The Catalan version of Wikipedia...has become central to the activism around the language...Àlex Hinojo, project manager at Wikimediacat and creator of@CatalanMuseums, says:

Many people say they edit because it's fun, they can provide more information about a topic…and they are building a country. Catalan-speaking civil society always maintains a certain activism in favour of its language, just as it does with other topics.

Read more here at Global Voices.

Note: To my mind, *Wikipedia is a sometimes unreliable source of information and can only be completely trusted when an article's sources are credible.

WikiMarathon at Drassanes Reials (Barcelona), on Wikipedia's 12th anniversary. March 2013. Photo by @Kippelboy.

 

Flamenco flashmob protests inside banks

As the above video shows (also here with Englsih subtitles) flamenco music and dance is well-suited to a dignified but demonstrative form of public demomstration.

The anti-capitalist group flo6x8 has been organising these events across Andalucia since last year.

More on this phenomenon here.

Barcelona resident makes “Third-culture” film

 “Where is Home?” asks Aga Alegria in her new documentary about kids and adults who have grown up “living on the edge of many different cultures” or “who have a sense of belonging everywhere and nowhere, and for whom the search for "home" is often a lifelong struggle and discovery.”

In an interview at InterNations producer/director Alegria talks about the movie, which was filmed in Spain as well as Canada, Trinidad & Tobago and Germany.

"The Day That Keeps On Giving" (My latest article in Catalonia Today magazine)

[Photo: Jasar - Granollers]

A man slices a dragon's head off (saving a princess) and he then gives her a rose that is made from the dragon's blood. The End?

No, just the beginning really. The human desire for legends of this sort is legendary but there is a lot more to every April 23, Sant Jordi's Day, than a mythical story.

One-off festival days are only one way to understand a nation's culture and they can sometimes give misleading impressions of a country and it's people's beliefs. Catalonia is not populated by gullible fools who believe in fire-breathing monsters. But Sant Jordi, supposed slayer of the beast, is the nominal “patron saints” of Catalonia (as well as the Aragon region.) Children in schools, including my son, have learnt about him for centuries and this day has evolved into a full-blown commercial event – one that has come to be important for millions of Catalan's and also for some of the people who did not originally start their lives here.

Sant Jordi's Day, or the “dia dels enamorats,” as it is often called, can be literally translated as lover's day, and love in all it's many forms is the reason for the gift-buying then gift-giving that forms a major part of the celebration. Typically, a man presents his girl-friend, wife or mother with a blood-red rose, but they can be bought in yellow and even blue and black and are usually wrapped in plastic along with the Catalan flag and a strand of wheat.

Women (as custom also dictates) will give the main men in their lives a book, though some partners are now starting to buck tradition and sometimes reverse the presents for each other. Overall, it's certainly a less-personal ritual, though a lot simpler, than the agonising and searching that Valentine's Day can bring.

The idea of combining roses with books was started in the 1920's by a Valencian man named Vicente Clavel who was then living in Barcelona.He noticed that both William Shakespeare and Cervantes died on the same day as Sant Jordi was reputed to have finally dreamt the last dream of his former glories.

I asked a number of foreign-born residents of Catalonia for their opinions on Sant Jordi's Day and got a range of responses.

American Mitsi Ito and British-born Zoë Valls both like to join the thousands of locals and enjoy the atmosphere walking up and down the capital's Rambla Catalunya and the Ramblas. Ryan Chandler, editor of Barcelona Ink literary magazine told me “Before, it just meant books for my family and a rose for my wife. Now I seem to spend it looking for stalls which are selling Barcelona INK. I still buy the books though, and the rose seems to have got [more up-market!] In the UK there isn't anything similar although I think they have tried to revive Saint Georges Day by organizing maypole dancing and Morris dancers.”

The emphasis on literature is important to many people. Audrey Reeder, the Headteacher of the Olive Tree School in Sant Pere de Ribes says that Sant Jordi's Day “means celebrating books, which are the mark of a civilized society. Legends and myths such as Saint George and the Dragon are vital in the development of a child’s imagination - and, of course, the rose is a symbol of so many things: beauty, passion, timelessness.” It is her favourite of all the Catalan celebrations but the nationalistic aspect of the day's celebrations does not interest her at all. “Nationalism for me is quite the reverse of civilization!” she says.

A number of others argued that Sant Jordi's Day should be a public holiday, while Italian David de Vidi thinks the day is about “cutting the distance between the sexes” and would like to see the day kept “natural and spontaneous, with no sponsors.” More typically though, it is what people do to mark the occasion that is the focus of their comments.

Simply enjoying the atmosphere is a focus for German teacher Cornelia Kraft. “I usually celebrate this day with a nice lunch and a stroll through the streets afterwards.” Mathilde Arthaud, ayoung French woman, tells me that she and her partner choose to have a nice dinner and exchange the standard Sant Jordi gifts. “Apart from that I love going into town, looking at all the rose shops on the street and taking the opportunity to buy some books for myself. I may also buy a rose for a special girl friend of mine,” she says.

So while Sant Jordi's Day is steeped in tradition and ritual, Catalonia's newest residents have certainly found their own ways to mark the occasion.

[An edited version of this article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, April 2013.]

Has a "European Spring" started?

Press conference in front of the office of the EU in Madrid. Photo from Desmontando Mentiras.

Last month,  "European citizens organized a week of protests against the austerity measures imposed on the countries of the European Union as a strategy for ending the economic crisis. Known as the European Counter Summit, it is [a] response to the European Summit in which European leaders gathered, and an occasion to make the voices heard of those citizens who defend a “Europe for the people and not for the markets“.

In Brussels, the protesters have chosen to bring their discontent to the European Council, while in Spain the Counter Summit week...culminated with a protest in the center of Madrid on Saturday, March 16."

More from Elena Arrontes' article at Global Voices Online here. 

Video: Not your average day...in Sabadell

Following on from my January post of some flashmob footage from a Spanish employment office, now comes another recent and similar event (but even more beautifully filmed and choreographed) in the city of Sabadell, just inland from Barcelona.


(I've chosen the version with minimal corporate sponsorship, from a Korean youtube user.)

Thanks to Danielle G.

The colours of corruption

...from Global Mail's detailed breakdown of the illegal activities and “culture of kickbacks” that have been going on here for some time now.

It makes for deeply disturbing reading.

Those "big industries"

[Photo by Javier at sic.]

As one of Spain's greatest living writers, Antonio Muñoz Molina is someone always worth reading and this short piece of his in the English language version of El Pais is no exception.

He expresses some opinions about Spain that I have long thought true about my country of birth, Australia. Muñoz Molina lives part of the time in New York and has that particular kind of clear sight about Spain that only living away from your native land can bring.

I'm not sure I fully agree with him about all that he says though. Compared to somewhere like Australia I think there is a richness of culture that is acknowledged by many locals and to say you are a writer or journalist provokes more interest from the average person here than in Australia, at least in my experience.

But then again, MM should know. I suspect that his opinions are largely based on contact with business people and middle-level public officials, who (all across this planet) generally put making money ahead of anything else as piddly as the creative “industries.”

Somebody who has never written a book or put-together a well-researched article would probably have no idea what it takes to do so, just as I have no clue (or real interest) in deal-making and political schmoozing.

Immigrant badly injured after assault at festival

Moulaye Ndiaye. Photo by Jesus Cisnes from lasprovincias.es.

"Moulaye Ndiaye, a street vendor and native from Senegal, was thrown from a bridge on the eve of the 2012 Tomatina Festival in Buñol, Valencia, Spain. 


Moulaye was selling his products at the festival when a young man stole his sunglasses. After asking, without success, for the man to return them, Moulaye decided to leave, and then he was shoved and pushed over a bridge more than six metres from the ground. The backpack which he was carrying and the reeds growing in the area where he fell [probably]saved his life. 

He spent a month in intensive care at the Manises Hospital with traumas, several broken ribs and a spinal injury. The assault has caused him to lose sight in his right eye and a very serious neck and back injury has prevented him from working since.

In its blog, and on its Facebook wall, the Movement Against Intolerance seeks the help of those who witnessed the assault, asking them to make contact with the organisation so that the case can remain open, as the police have been unable to find the aggressor who escaped into the night. There has also been a large civilian mobilisation  which still continues, and the residents of the town of Buñol say they are horrified at this tragic event."

More details here at Global Voices online.

Townspeople halt attempt to sell-off public water

A promising new current affairs publication and website La Marea features the story of this attempted privatisation gone wrong.

Under the slogan, "Water is a service, not a business," thousands of villagers in Laguna de Duero (Valladolid) have successfully stood up for almost a year to their mayor's plan to privatize the water supply in the municipality.

Read more at La Marea here.

“The Spanish Earth”

What I notice from this film is the other-worldliness of Spain at that time. 

The buildings are vaguely recognisable but the men ride donkeys like timeless, rural Africans and the women sweep dirt streets with bent backs because their brooms do not even have such a thing as a simple long handle.

Their faces generally show hardship (something that has recently returned here with the “crisis,”) while skinny dogs scuttle around.

Later, we see teams of men working in the country with hand-held hoes and when a man speaks on the telephone it is surprising because the mental atmosphere of the film could have been almost medieval. 

The war scenes reinforce how empty war always is. The attempts to glorify it with stirring music are hollow only partly because we know that the end result is a stifling dictatorship, four decades long.

In another scene, now in Madrid, ragged children play in the street and in the next frame a man hurriedly carries a seemingly empty coffin over one shoulder. 

Food cues (for some people this is a reality again today) crowd next to destroyed buildings and a single corpse lies in the gutter. (We are told that the body is that of a book-keeper on his way to work at eight in the morning.)

After more battle scenes and shots of noble-peasant types the film, now clearly a piece of propaganda, ends with a man's voice singing a very moving a capella song, ruined somewhat by Hemingway's voice-over.

For a detailed explanation of the making of “The Spanish Earth” see Open Culture here.

The tribes of "El Clasico"...in Iraqi Kurdistan

Every time that Barcelona FC plays Real Madrid it is a big event but (surprsingly) Iraq's Kurdish population are just as divided as the rival capital cities here.

 "Those who support Real are usually richer people, while the poorer people are more likely to support Barca.

Barcelona fans appear to be more numerous, probably because Kurdistan and Catalonia are both regions pressing for greater autonomy...

Last August, a banner was unfurled in the stands during an El Clasico in Barcelona's Nou Camp stadium bearing the words: "Kurdistan is not Iraq / Catalonia is not Spain"

Read more here.

Crowdfunders empty their pockets for 'Pa Negre' producer's latest pro-independence film

"‘L'endemà. Respostes per a decidir‘, a documentary about Catalonia's potential independence from Spain, produced by Isona Passola [pictured left], earned a record-breaking €150,000 on the crowdfunding platform Verkami on February 15, 2013. 




Passola, who produced the award-winning [and extremely moving] film Pa Negre, hoped to reach that amount in 40 days, but [did so in just 11 days.]

Previously, the crowdfunding record in Catalonia was €,50,000, according to the Catalan-language journal Diari Ara.

The project's promoters have eagerly asserted that if they can reach €153,108  the film will be “the most successful crowdfunding project in Europe.”

L'endemà is intended to project “clear, solid, reliable and credible arguments” to combat “the fear of voting YES” in an upcoming referendum for the independence that the Catalan government is organizing, while defying firm resistance from the central Spanish government."

[Source here at Global Voices online.]

Corruption - or just "the way we do things here"?

There are a a couple of things that can be said about this latest reeking, venal scandal in Catalonia.*

The man at the heart of it,  Jordi Pujol is a hero to many people here as he largely seen as the main person responsible for Catalonia's post-Franco autonomous powers.

His son has allegedly been laundering his family's allegedly dirty money from an alleged trunk of an alleged car to an also-alleged bank in Andorra (which is a vile, ultra-consumerist ski-resort city in a tiny principality where people like to drive their big black cars too fast through narrow roads.)

This part of the world (still) has a lot going for it but institutional honesty is obviously not one of the strong points.

Cheating on your income tax and using the "black" or cash-economy is largely the done thing. In my experience, cheating, in whatever form, is thought to be the clever thing to do.

Children do it from a very young age and at a local (wealthy) private school where I used to work, it was completely standard to cheat in tests and teachers knew about it and did not punish it.

The family is probably the most important single unit in Mediterranean Europe, so favouring a brother, son or cousin is entirely normal.

It is not just those at the top of the political pyramid who do this. It is a practise that is as ordinary as drinking a glass of wine here. Having connections is called "enchufe" - literally, 'plugged-in.

It is difficult living here without some kinds of connections to help you advance your lot, so the common-place act is the one that scratches a friends back when they will also soon scratch yours.

The latest cases of corruption are logical but extreme, grotesque extensions of some basic dishonesty.

An edited version of the above text was first published under the same title at the World Voices blog.

[*I strongly suggest reading one of the comments from 'reload' under the original article for an insightful explanation about the surprising use of 500 Euro notes.]

Isidro Nonell and Raquel Meller at Barcelona's CCCB

I recently visited Barcelona's CCCB to see their Paral·lel [Avenue], 1894-1939 exhibition and came away with two names stuck in my mind.

I was taken with the soulful paintings of Catalan artist Isidro Nonell and by the sensuality of the actress/performer Raquell Meller, who (oddly) has a great attractivness on film but hardly any in the frozen image.

The transformation of this area from a dusty and sleezy shantytown of “outsiders” into an entertainment district then into an important boulevarde is remarkable.

“Avinguda Paral·lel was the centre of nightlife and bohemia in the Barcelona of the early 20th-century and was the realm of the so-called “lesser genres”, shows definitely popular in nature and in which music usually played a vital role. These included from cabaret and music hall, to the revue, vaudeville and social melodrama, flamenco and zarzuela, the traditional Spanish operetta. In addition, there was a range of paratheatrical arts, such as circus and varieties of all kinds, often combined with the first cinematographic screenings.”